Nick Batterham has unveiled the soundtrack to Rone’s latest immersive artwork, Home, a new suburban installation presented as part of Chadstone’s Light To Night festival in Melbourne.
by Paul Cashmere
Composer, songwriter and sound designer Nick Batterham has released the soundtrack for Home, the latest large-scale installation by acclaimed Melbourne artist Rone. The exhibition opened on 11 June at Chadstone Shopping Centre as part of the Light To Night festival and runs through to 12 July, pairing Rone’s meticulously constructed suburban house environment with an original score composed and recorded by Batterham.
The project marks the latest collaboration between Batterham and Rone, continuing a creative partnership that has become a defining element of several of the artist’s most ambitious immersive works. Batterham previously composed the soundtracks for Time, staged at Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station in 2022 and 2023, and Empire at Burnham Beeches in 2019.
Home transforms a purpose-built house and backyard into a nostalgic snapshot of Australian suburban life. The installation explores memory, absence and the passage of time, themes that Batterham says informed the music.
“The soundtrack has a romantic nostalgia that plays to the beauty in decay theme within Rone’s work,” Batterham said. “A melancholic sadness that feels ok to sit with.”
He explained that the score has been integrated directly into the environment, with individual instruments appearing to emerge from domestic objects throughout the house.
“Inside the installation, individual instruments play from household items, like the violin emanating from the oven and viola from the television, which gives a sense of the humans that occupied the home,” he said.
The soundtrack consists of two original compositions, As The Days Progress and In Moonlight Hours. Batterham performs piano on the recordings and is joined by a group of leading Melbourne classical musicians including Zoë Black, Sarah Curro, Chris Moore, Josephine Vains and Dan Beasy.
Discussing As The Days Progress, Batterham said the piece was designed to mirror the interaction of people within a household.
“It dances between major and minor key, with melodic lines repeated by alternating instruments. This makes for a conversation within the house as the rooms interact, a home being the sum of the people who live there.”
The second composition, In Moonlight Hours, accompanies the installation’s evening atmosphere and features woodwind performances by Michael Pisani and Kim Tan.
For Batterham, Home continues a significant chapter in a career that has increasingly bridged contemporary classical composition, film sound design and large-scale visual art. His work on Rone’s installations has helped establish a distinctive model for Australian immersive exhibitions, where sound functions as a narrative element rather than simply background accompaniment.
The partnership arrives as Rone’s profile continues to grow both nationally and internationally. Born Tyrone Wright, the Melbourne-based artist first emerged through street art before developing large-scale installation works that blend portraiture, architecture and environmental storytelling. His projects Empty, Omega, Alpha, Empire and Time attracted substantial audiences and helped redefine the possibilities of site-specific art experiences in Australia.
Time, staged inside the disused sections of Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station, became one of the city’s most successful contemporary art events, drawing more than 100,000 visitors before later transferring to the Art Gallery of Western Australia. Batterham’s soundtrack was a central component of that experience.
Away from his work with Rone, Batterham has maintained a diverse career across music and screen production. An AFI and AACTA Award nominated sound designer and ARIA nominated musician, he has composed for documentaries including Bromley: Light After Dark and Queens Of Concrete, while also creating sound design for feature films and television productions. In 2024, he contributed the music and sound design for the web series Buried, which won the AACTA Award for Best Online Drama or Comedy.
The release of Home follows Batterham’s contemporary classical album First Snow (Music For Piano And Strings), issued last October, and his recent standalone instrumental composition La Petite Mort. The latter features cellist David Berlin and pianist Georgina Lewis and explores themes of intimacy, mortality and emotional transition.
Batterham will also return to the stage next month for a rare live performance alongside fellow Melbourne songwriter Ben Mason. The show will feature new material and performances from Batterham with collaborators Nick Murray and Jethro Woodward.
Saturday 12 July, Melbourne, Merri Creek Tavern
Ticketing information: Tickets available via TryBooking.
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